


Hold Me All Night

by lonelywalker



Category: The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Sex, Anxious Mental Babbling, Blow Jobs, Canon Gay Relationship, Character of Color, Interracial Relationship, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:26:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guert loses his virginity. Again.</p><p>Spoilers up to and including chapter 45.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Me All Night

There must be a way, Affenlight reflected, to check into a motel solely for the purpose of having sex with your young male lover without feeling like the sleaziest man ever to walk the earth.

Perhaps the fact that this particular motel seemed so quiet and rural and wholesome just made it even worse. The man behind the front desk hadn’t quite discussed local sports scores with him, but there certainly hadn’t been the complete indifference for which Affenlight had been hoping. Still, the clerk hadn’t been surprised when he’d paid in cash (as if anyone was seriously going to be investigating his credit card purchases), and he’d been given a room key, and that was all he really needed.

Owen was leaning against the Audi when Affenlight returned from the office, messenger bag over one shoulder. They were both still wearing what they’d been wearing when Affenlight had visited Owen’s dorm, which for Owen meant sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with some sort of Chinese or Japanese character. Affenlight had spent far too much time in that fish fry basement wondering just how strange they might appear to the other diners – could they really pass for father and son (Owen seemed to be the only person of color in the building, if not the whole town), and if not, what would people think? How many possibilities would they cycle through before landing on “gay lovers”? And in what world did it even matter what diners half-suspected in a random restaurant he’d never visit again?

As dinner dates went, it could possibly have been worse. He’d watched Owen eat salad, rebuking himself for thinking about other people when Owen was right there, the tips of their shoes touching beneath the table, Owen’s fingers splayed on the tabletop just inches from his own. He could have reached out and squeezed those fingers, taken his hand… What would anyone have done, if he had? This wasn’t the Deep South, and even in the Bible Belt people had manners. Owen could well be his son, never mind the color disparity, and plenty of people adopted children of other races anyway and… and why was he even thinking about Owen in those sorts of familial terms? 

“I’m thinking about fucking you,” Owen had said, in a tone indistinguishable from, ‘would you please pass the ketchup?’, and it was at that point that Affenlight had finally remembered about Pella. 

If Pella had been upset on the phone, or at least not pretending to _not_ be upset, he would have had to interrupt their meal and apologetically drop Owen back off on campus before trying to track down Pella and apologize for a hundred actual or imagined slights throughout her childhood, none of which were anywhere near as bad as stealing off to be with his secret boyfriend when he was supposed to be her rock to lean on in the face of a marital breakup. 

But Pella had said she wasn’t mad, and Affenlight had needed to believe her, and so here they were, checking into a motel. He’d been to many motels in his life, either with or without Pella, with or without various girlfriends, but never explicitly for sex. Not that this was explicitly for sex either. It was completely possible that Owen would just want to sleep, and that would be fine as well. When Affenlight fantasized about him, which was often, the various scenarios didn’t always necessarily require touch. They could just sleep in the same bed, even in their underwear, and it would be enough to lie there and hear Owen’s breathing, to know that if he just moved his hand by an inch he would touch Owen’s shoulder…

There was a thin line between sweet and creepy, Affenlight suspected. Perhaps actually having sex would be simpler for both of them.

Whatever Owen’s thought process was, it seemed to be something similar, because Affenlight had barely shut the door behind him, was turning the lock, when Owen kissed him. His imagination had a tendency to characterize Owen as being small which, in reality, was certainly not the case. Slender and slim-shouldered and gentle, yes, his fingertips caressing Affenlight’s hair as they kissed, but only an inch or two shorter than Affenlight himself, which meant their eyes were about level and, when Owen leaned into him, their crotches were too.

In the past two weeks of sexual intimacy between them, some things had been made off-limits by the circumstances. Affenlight’s office might have had a singularly uncomfortable love seat, but there was no bed and it was very unwise for either of them to get any more naked than necessary, lest Pella or someone else come knocking at the door. Pella’s occasional presence in the apartment upstairs, not to mention the students wandering about in the quad, had meant things had to be quiet too. And Owen’s head injury had made it impossible for him to use his mouth for most of those two weeks.

But the swelling was gone now along with most of the bruising, and this room was equipped with both a bed and thick walls… Or at least none of their relatives within shouting distance. It was nice just to kiss Owen without worrying about his jaw, and to feel the brush of his hair, the wet heat of his breath. 

Owen stuck out a hand and found the light switch. The room was small but neat, a rest place for travelers rather than a pitstop for hookers, and someone had left the heat on. Affenlight expected Owen to remark about it and search for the thermostat immediately, condemning them to a night of frigidity, but instead he tugged his sweatshirt off over his head, straightened his glasses, and went right back to kissing, his body pressed up against Affenlight’s, their mutual arousal something that had never needed to be spoken.

Affenlight’s fingers trailed down Owen’s forearm, up to the sleeve of his t-shirt. There was so much of Owen’s body he’d never seen, those mysterious zones under t-shirt and sweatpants, even if he’d grown quite accustomed to the sight and feel and taste of Owen’s penis. But then the same was true for him, and he’d been very glad of those particular restrictions. He’d had an impressively athletic body in his youth, and even a few years ago when he was rowing regularly and dutifully spending time in the gym, he’d never been shy about taking his shirt off. But in the last eight years, spent at a college by a lake that inexplicably had no rowing club, he’d walked some and run intermittently on the treadmill and generally let himself get out of shape. It hadn’t seemed to matter much – he was still in excellent physical condition compared to most of the balding lecturers with sagging guts in his age bracket, and it wasn’t as if he had even had any potential partners to try and impress… At least, until his little crush on Owen Dunne had reared its baffled head.

Perhaps if he’d rushed to the gym after that first meeting in February, he would feel better about himself now. But he hadn’t thought anything would actually _happen_ , and certainly not anything physical. And, besides, there was no way with even the biggest effort and best genetics in the world that he was going to look like the nude model Owen had on his computer. Probably no one looked like that without dehydration and Photoshop, but that didn’t change the fact that Owen had been jerking off to that guy while Affenlight had been thinking only of Owen. Owen was perfect. Affenlight was only a collection of imperfections made more obvious by his age.

“Should we go to bed?” Owen asked, one hand sliding down Affenlight’s shirt front to squeeze at the bulge in his slacks.

It was the questioning tone that made Affenlight suddenly relax. He had a say. He could decide. And, after all, he was by far the more experienced, even if all of that experience had been with women. Owen, his sweatpants drawing tight at his groin, was very much not a woman… but it was hardly as though he was a different species. Kissing him was the same, and Affenlight was now thinking that perhaps his introductory attempts at oral sex on a man, while dealing with quite different anatomy, had not been altogether hopeless. He had received his share – more than his share – of blow jobs over the years, and it was hard to think of any that had been less than highly enjoyable. And, of course, Affenlight was familiar with the equipment. What he liked was probably going to be something Owen liked.

He pressed gentle fingers to Owen’s lips. “Shh,” he said, a wave of calmness coming over him as he pulled Owen’s t-shirt up and over his head, and reversed their positions – Owen now with his back to the wall, his eyes wide, his chest bare.

As he kissed Owen again, his fingertips explored new frontiers of skin and bone: shoulders surprisingly muscular, back smooth, his belly with a boyish softness. Affenlight was used to breasts, was really quite an admirer of breasts, but Owen of course had nipples too, dark and hard. It would be ridiculous and reductive to view Owen as some sort of abbreviated female… but he had to work with what he knew and what he wanted, which was to satisfy Owen in every way he could. 

He leaned down to kiss a nipple, tasting Owen’s skin: never sweat, but a gentle herbal odor that was probably from soap like any other human being but nonetheless seemed to come from within, as though Owen had sprung full-grown from an oak tree, or emerged from the waters of a forest spring. He closed his lips and sucked gently, and Owen moaned softly, his hips pressing into Affenlight’s, the fingers of one hand threading through the thick mess of Affenlight’s hair. “Guert…”

“Not good?”

Owen’s eyes were closed, but he laughed. “Too good. I’m going to ruin these pants.”

“We can’t have that.” Affenlight sank to his knees, pulling the sweatpants down. Owen’s underwear was a little plainer than normal today, but the straining outline of his penis meant any pattern or bold color would have been entirely outdone in any case. Affenlight peeled the briefs away too, and sat back on his heels for a moment, just to _look_.

He’d wondered, on one of his more recent early-morning shower sessions following feverish dreams of Owen, whether he would have been attracted to Owen no matter what he looked like. Initially he’d been attracted to Owen’s intelligence, his quiet confidence, his wit and playful smile, and perhaps the force of that attraction had dominated everything else, sweeping away the sexual preferences of sixty years. He might have wanted Owen even if Owen had been as large and muscular and traditionally masculine as Mike Schwartz, or as pale and blond as Henry Skrimshander. But looking at him now, none of that seemed remotely possible.

“I feel a little objectified,” Owen commented, eyes half-open in the harsh light, but he was half-smiling too. “Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows.”

Affenlight ran his palms down over Owen’s thighs. “You’re beautiful.”

“You’re a sweetheart, Guert.” Owen opened his eyes all the way, arched an eyebrow. “And fully dressed.”

“Mm?” Affenlight leaned in again to kiss the crease of Owen’s thigh, a hand working Owen’s erection. Sucking cock really hadn’t been as strange or difficult or potentially disgusting as he’d feared: it had been fear, mainly, that had left him feeling so nauseated and anxious the first time. He’d tasted semen before, albeit his own, and if he was going to have anyone’s body parts in his mouth they might as well belong to someone as scrupulously clean as Owen.

Owen filled his mouth now, hot and so hard it made Affenlight’s erection pulse in sympathy. But he could wait. For now he wanted the foreplay of making Owen – zenlike, taciturn Owen – gasp and whimper and beg, and perhaps still being dressed himself played some little part in his momentary need for dominance. Because, somehow, being on his knees in a motel room with another man’s penis between his lips had become dominance this evening, and he liked it. 

Whenever he managed, inadvertently or not, to do something particularly good, Owen’s fingers tightened in his hair and Owen bit his lip or let out a moan of pleasure mingled with frustration and need. And then, after a minute or two, there were no more breathless moans, just a relentless thrust of his hips and “Guert, Guert, Guert” from a dry mouth until he came, salt on Affenlight’s tongue and a wordless cry in the night air. 

Affenlight licked him all over, for a moment feeling as satisfied as if it were his own release, until Owen pushed his head back, suddenly too sensitive to be touched, and sat down heavily on the thinly-carpeted floor, legs stretched out, head tipped back. 

“I’m glad we’re in Wisconsin,” Affenlight said. “The one place I’m probably _not_ the only Guert for a thousand miles.”

Owen chuckled and yawned. “Bed?”

“I hope you don’t expect me to carry you there.”

“My Prince Charming.”

Owen, when he finally levered himself back up and onto his feet, peeled back the many layers of blankets on the bed, declared it impressively clean, and went to the bathroom to “carry out his evening toilet”. Affenlight, with half a mind that he was supposed to strip and arrange himself seductively to await Owen’s return, instead sat down at the end of the bed and fiddled with the TV remote, the numbers of which did not seem to match any previously known or recognized configuration of channels anywhere in the United States. Once he found the History Channel, however, he did take off his jacket (his usual Westish tie had already been removed before dinner, in the manner of a foolproof disguise along the lines of Clark Kent’s glasses), and then his shoes and socks. 

Feet, he reflected, were a strangely personal thing, even when not dealing with particular fetishes. How many people, swimmers aside, had ever seen his toes? He often wandered down to his office in the early hours barefoot in whatever he’d worn to bed the previous night, unshaven, wearing his much-detested but highly-professorial glasses instead of his usual contacts. He often wished he could work like that all the time. Suits and ties looked nice, but they weren’t entirely conducive to his thought process.

Owen switched off the bathroom light. “I’m beginning to think your shirt is an integral part of you. Although I know you’re not as genitally impaired as a Ken doll.”

He really should have undressed while Owen was away. Now he could be under the covers and relatively safe… but instead he was going to have to strip while Owen lay back against the pillows, hands behind his head, with one eye on some drivel about Nazis and Aztecs.

Affenlight had unbuttoned his shirt and was slipping it off when Owen spoke again: “Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”

Affenlight smiled. “Why would I mind?”

“Physical intimacy doesn’t often correspond to the emotional version,” Owen said, and reached to mute the TV. “My mother mentioned to me that Pella had told _her_ … Well, this is sounding more gossipy than I intended, but I gather that Pella’s mother passed away?”

Oh. Affenlight pulled off his undershirt, all self-consciousness on the physical front suddenly gone. “Yes. About twenty years ago, now. Pella was very small.” It seemed strange to think that the Pella of then and the Pella of now were even the same person. 

“That must’ve been hard.”

“Well… I think in a way it helped that she was so young. It was easier to forget the pain and just settle into a new reality of living with me, as if it had always been that way. Later on, of course, she got upset that she didn’t really remember her mom so much, and I think her mom might’ve dealt a lot better with her teenage years…” Affenlight was folding his t-shirt carefully, methodically, even though he really had nowhere to put it but on the floor.

“Of course. But actually, Guert, I meant that it must have been hard for you.”

Had it been hard? He’d been shocked, certainly. Sarah had seemed like the sort of person for whom the world moved in perfectly defined, non-mysterious ways, the conception of her daughter notwithstanding. It had seemed as though they’d exist forever in that strange sort of businesslike parenting arrangement. But his feelings on the matter, the real pain, seemed to center on Pella – on that long walk he’d taken through Harvard to the creche where he’d deposited her for safekeeping during his evening office hours. He’d seriously considered just not telling her. She could go days, weeks without knowing the truth. She could be happy, blissfully unaware. Did he really have the right to rob her of all that potential joy?

But she’d run to him with all her childish trust and love, and he’d known that peculiar burden of the parent: the need to occasionally wound deeply out of a sense of greater love and responsibility. He’d carried her on his shoulders down to the river, because he himself was calmest there, and they’d talked, and she’d cried out of fear and loss and confusion. In the future, ten years down the line, she’d cry and run from him, slamming doors, disappearing off in a friend’s car. But then she’d clung to him and he’d clung to her too, and they’d been Affenlights alone at the start of a great, terrifying adventure.

“We weren’t together,” he tried to explain to Owen. It was difficult to really explain without seeming hopelessly unfeeling. “Well, we were together for about a year, but she broke up with me before she discovered she was pregnant. We just… She was my daughter’s mom. We were close because of that, but we were never in love.” He dropped his slacks and undershorts to the floor and got into bed.

Owen was frowning, which wasn’t entirely unexpected. “Why did she break up with you?”

Affenlight paused in his rearranging of blankets to glance at Owen’s face. The expression seemed sincere. “Really, that’s your question about that entire situation?”

“It appears to be quite relevant.”

“Well, I don’t know. It was clear from the outset that neither of us wanted anything serious. Perhaps after ten months my literary anecdotes grew a little tedious. Or she simply didn’t like that I smoked.” He should have quit when Pella was born, or at least when she came to live with him, but it had seemed like the one freedom he could preserve after having to toddler-proof his apartment and tidy up all his papers and keep something like regular hours, if only to get her to preschool and bed on time. 

“And you’ve never been attracted to a man before?”

“No.” There was some sort of logic to this line of questioning, but Affenlight didn’t particularly like it. “I’m not a devastated, bereaved man reaching out to someone who’s the precise opposite of my lost love, O. It’s a nice idea, but it’s fiction. I’d be more convinced that you’re only interested in me because you were hit in the head by a baseball.”

Owen smiled and trailed a hand down Affenlight’s bare arm, over the black ink of his tattoo. “I’ve been interested in you for a lot longer than that. I thought it was polite to let you make the first move, just in case I was mistaken, but then I found out I’d be going to Tokyo… I didn’t want to lose any more time. And besides, the Whitman was a fairly blatant declaration of your interest.” He cocked his head slightly to the side. “Ishmael had a tattoo on his arm as well, didn’t he?”

“He had tattoos everywhere, it seems,” Affenlight said. “But he had the dimensions of the sperm and right whales on his arm, yes. Not a picture.”

“It’s nicely done. Rockwell Kent?”

“Inspired by. I’ve never been the most original artist.”

Owen’s eyebrows raised by a few astonished millimeters. “You drew this?”

“About forty years ago. Don’t ask me to replicate the feat – Pella’s the real artist, although she takes every opportunity to deny it.”

“You Affenlights never cease to amaze me…” Owen’s attention was caught by a flash of color on the TV screen, and he reached for the remote again. “Oh, now this I might actually want to watch…”

“This” was something on feudal Japan, and while Affenlight was reasonably sure the TV was going to spend an hour covering something that could be more easily gleaned from a decent textbook in ten minutes, it was far from the worst option. He switched off the main lights, switched on the dull amber glow of the bedside lamp, and nestled into Owen’s side. He could hear the documentary narration clearly enough, but he kept his eyes closed, one hand resting on Owen’s belly, his head against Owen’s shoulder.

How long had it been since he’d shared a bed with someone? Last year he’d gone to a conference and gladly hooked up with an old acquaintance, but she hadn’t stayed long and he hadn’t really wanted her to. Snuggling, much as he liked the warmth and the human contact, generally connoted much more than just that – it meant need, and that much need often felt stifling. He preferred to stretch out alone and free, unencumbered by the needs and schedules of others. But with Owen he was the needy one, craving commitment and love and affection. 

At that thought he glanced up anxiously to see Owen’s expression, to analyze whether Owen was feeling as stifled as he normally would in this situation. But Owen simply kissed him on the forehead and lifted a hand to ruffle his hair, his attention almost instantly back on the program. 

Affenlight closed his eyes, content, and listened to Owen’s heartbeat.

“Guert?”

The television noise was gone. Affenlight stirred. “Mm?”

“Are you asleep?” Owen’s voice was soft, barely a murmur.

If only this were a situation he experienced every night, lulled to sleep by Owen’s warmth, he might have drowsily nodded and let himself drift back off. But who knew when they’d have the opportunity to spend the night, or even an hour, together again? The next few weeks would be packed with baseball games and finals, and the stacks of paperwork on Affenlight’s desk would likely double, not to mention that he still had to write his commencement speech…

He made himself open his eyes. “No, not really. How was the program?”

“It passed the time.” Owen rolled over onto his side and kissed him, lightly at first, then deeper, as if to give him the hint that it wasn’t merely a goodnight peck. Owen’s hand ran down his back, rested briefly on his ass, and then Owen nudged in closer, pulling Affenlight’s leg over his hip. Owen always made him feel absurdly large and heavy and ungainly by comparison, but he couldn’t worry about that now, not with Owen kissing him like that, his half-hard penis rubbing into Affenlight’s half-hard penis, and Owen’s hand still there on his ass.

_I’m thinking about fucking you._

He’d thought about it too. He could hardly avoid thinking about it, now that he was in a sexual relationship with a man. Sex didn’t have to mean penetration, but for him in his little heterocentric world it always had, and for the people involved in the gay porn he’d watched online, attempting to keep an academic perspective rather than simply jerking off at his desk, it seemed to as well. 

Initially he’d assumed he would be the one on top… but he’d made himself dismiss that almost immediately. Just because Owen was less traditionally masculine in his appearance didn’t mean much. Affenlight, after all, had begun to take great pleasure in getting down on his knees and letting Owen fuck his mouth, and that had never been anything but a feminine role to his own mind. And once he thought about it, really thought about having Owen – not some random penis, but _Owen_ – inside him, he’d become so unbearably hard that he’d broken the habit of a decade and let himself come in bed, Pella in the next room, almost smothering himself against the pillow. 

“I want you to,” he said now.

Owen squeezed his ass playfully. “You’re sure?”

Affenlight nodded.

There was a space between them that, for a moment, was filled by Owen’s hot, excited breath and all the words he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud, and then Owen pressed a hand to Affenlight’s chest and turned him over onto his back.

The blankets were all pushed away, rolled over on themselves by the end of the bed, and even in the soft lamplight every inch of Affenlight’s sixty-year-old body was naked and exposed. The tattoo, he felt, must be the best part: artistic and carefully designed, never aging. He felt pale and pasty next to Owen, even though Owen’s skin tone wasn’t much different from his own. He felt flabby, even though Owen was neither skinny nor muscular. He felt old, even though others had often accused him of being as ageless as Owen might one day look, and in any case Owen had always known his age, probably down to the day thanks to Wikipedia. But there was something else, as Owen touched him with careful fingers and leaned in to kiss his throat: he felt _adored_.

Owen’s fingers curled around his penis, working him to hardness again while lips and tongue lavished attention on his left nipple – not something that normally turned him on, and perhaps it was more the touch of Owen’s hand on his penis, but something was sparked down between his legs that was hotter and more insistent than simple arousal. 

He bit his lips together, remembered where they were, and groaned out loud, his body craving something he couldn’t quite name. “Owen, please…”

“Shh, it’s all right.” Owen kissed his sternum, shifted position to kiss the head of his penis, and then backed off entirely, going to get his bag from beside the bed. “You’ve never done this before?”

“Of course not.”

Owen shrugged, pulling out KY Jelly and a roll of condoms. “Straight men enjoy assplay too.”

Assplay. The term made him giggle like he was high on some of Owen’s pot, or maybe just a teenage girl. He cleared his throat, tried to be serious. “Never really occurred to me.” He’d been familiar with the concept, of course. Much of his work had at least touched on homoeroticism and the physicality of male love: oral, intercrural, anal. He’d just never been tempted to explore any of it in the bedroom rather than the library.

“So…” Owen sat back up on the bed, cross-legged between Affenlight’s feet. “You have to tell me if you don’t enjoy it. It’s not mandatory, Guert. Lots of couples don’t do it.”

“But you like it.”

Owen smiled. “I also like you, and I’d prefer for you to honestly enjoy whatever we do together, not just put a brave face on it for my benefit.”

It was probably pitiful just how much that _I like you_ made Affenlight’s heart leap. “Well,” he said, “why don’t you get your cock in my ass and we’ll find out what I honestly enjoy.”

He was nervous, both about the potential for pain and the potential for somehow getting it all wrong, for not being good enough or gay enough. But the slowness with which Owen carefully coated his fingers with the lubricant made him calm down a little, not least because Owen’s fingers were so elegantly beautiful. How could anyone fear pain from those fingers? And then Owen took him firmly in his right hand, stroking, keeping him hard, although that probably wasn’t an issue.

Affenlight had mentally braced himself for a plunging in of fingers, but Owen simply stroked with his fingertips, as though he had infinite patience and no need whatsoever for sleep. “Mm, good,” he said when he finally slid in his middle finger, only up to the first knuckle, and Affenlight forced himself to relax even amid a state of arousal his body could barely fathom. 

“It’s okay,” he said. “I can take it.” Begging Owen to fuck him didn’t seem very appropriate… but he wasn’t far off caring absolutely nothing about what might or might not be appropriate.

Owen looked at him a little quizzically, but he did slide in the whole damned finger, and then another. It felt… _bizarre_ might have been the word, feeling those fingers move and thrust and curl inside him. Even with such slender fingers, Affenlight felt fuller than he’d ever been, but that shouldn’t have been erotic. Nevertheless, there was some sort of strange pressure building inside him, a longing desire for something he’d never experienced but knew, with absolute clarity, he needed. He was also very keen on not coming before Owen was actually inside him, actually fucking him. “Oh god,” he said. “Please just… I need you.”

He felt like praising choirs of angels when Owen didn’t argue, but he still had to wait an unbearable length of time for Owen to roll on a condom and slather himself in more lubricant than was probably necessary for any activity bar Turkish oil wrestling.

The size differential between two of Owen’s fingers and his actual penis was fairly considerable, but Affenlight was in no mental state to worry. If it hurt, it hurt, and he’d played enough football games and rowed enough races to know that pain didn’t always matter so very much. It might matter in the morning, of course, but he would live.

It seemed that with every one of his rapid breaths Owen edged inside him a little more, and then time or restraint gave in and Owen pushed all the way. Affenlight might have seen stars if he’d seen anything at all. All the neurotransmitters of his brain were currently devoted to far more extraordinary sensations. It wasn’t painful, precisely, just an intense pressure and sense of pleasurable fullness combined with the understanding that this was Owen inside him, and Owen was fucking him, and nothing could be better.

“Jesus, O,” he managed to gasp.

Owen planted his palms under Affenlight’s shoulders and leaned in to kiss him. “Is that a good ‘Jesus’ or a painful ‘Jesus’?” he asked.

Affenlight tilted his hips up a little, crossing his legs at the ankles around Owen’s back, and there, that felt better. “You’ve joined a very exclusive club when it comes to people who’ve taken my virginity.”

“Virginity is an outdated, misogynistic concept,” Owen said, but he was smiling and his hips were rocking in-out, the rhythm already delightful. “Who was the girl?”

“An old high school friend I got horribly drunk with one Christmas back home on the farm. I was nineteen. As you can see, I’ve always been a late developer.”

“ _Nineteen_ ,” Owen repeated with a sense of wonder.

Affenlight stroked his cheek, that one last bruise… “And you?”

It was several thrusts before Owen had good enough self-control to answer. “If we’re talking purely about penetrative sex, then eighteen. Jason Gomes. He really was very good-looking, you know.”

“Uh huh.” Under normal circumstances, Affenlight might have been jealous of Jason Gomes, but Jason Gomes had inexplicably dumped Owen and was now far from Westish, and was certainly not having the pleasure of making love to Owen at this very moment. 

The pressure inside him was blossoming in a way that no longer seemed to rely on Owen’s movements. Affenlight reached down to relieve the steadily worsening ache in his penis.

“Fuck,” Owen said sharply, which was so unlike him that Affenlight looked up for a moment, worried. Owen’s kiss was hot, sloppy, desperate. “It’s okay… I just… I’m going to…”

Affenlight had never looked into Owen’s eyes as he came before, and now Owen came with a slam of hips, his eyes wide, body taut and back arched with sudden tension. A second later he was all hot, limp limbs sprawled over Affenlight, who hugged him tight, absently thinking _we’ve never even hugged before_.

“Guert…” Owen’s voice at his ear was a dazed whisper. “Oh god Guert.”

When Owen sat up again, easing out of Affenlight and rolling off the condom, it was with visible effort, fighting off the effects of endorphins and sex-induced lethargy. Affenlight was about to tell him his own needs didn’t matter, but then Owen was sucking him, fingers sliding back inside, and Affenlight was soon finished, every drop of energy garnered from fish and beer now utterly spent.

He felt rather than saw Owen move back up the bed to lie next to him, and reached out a hand to touch him. Owen’s fingers entwined with his.

“It’ll be better next time,” Owen said. “I haven’t done this for a while, and you… You got me worked up.”

Affenlight laughed. “I hope I always get you worked up.” He felt drained and empty rather than sore. He reached down to feel what he imagined to be a gaping hole, but instead it felt much the same as it ever had, if hotter and smeared with lubricant. His body, used to forty or so years of straight sex, didn’t really seem to mind gay sex too much. Perhaps he really was a liberal down to the molecular level.

Beeps signaled that Owen was setting the alarm on his phone. Affenlight didn’t want to know for when. “More TV?” he asked, opening his eyes and reaching down to tug up the mess of blankets.

“I don’t think I have any brain left to deaden.” Owen set down the phone and switched off the lamp, moving back against Affenlight in the darkness. “I’ll find us some coffee in the morning.”

Affenlight wrapped an arm around him and kissed him on the ear, glad that Owen hadn’t followed through on his earlier request for poetry. All the poems he knew by heart reeked of loneliness and longing and death, none of which had any place here between them.

He lay awake long after Owen relaxed in his arms and his breathing became a soft, steady snuffle. Sleep seemed like a waste of the little time they had together: May stretched out before them with all its anxieties and chaos, which would no doubt begin the next morning with a groveling apology to Pella. But then it would be June and the beginning of the beautiful, long, quiet summer at Westish. The baseball season would be over, Owen would be teaching, and Affenlight would have little to do but catch up on his reading. At the weekends the two of them could steal off to Milwaukee for dinner and a movie, or drive out by the lake and, if Owen was morally opposed to fishing, simply sit there and talk or read or even make love in the long grass, which he supposed everyone should do at least once in their lives. Such thoughts were nicer than dreams, and in just a few weeks they could well be a reality.

Affenlight closed his eyes.


End file.
